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Meh - everyone has a submarine these days. . .

Even rebel separatist groups. Here in the Philippines the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) sadly have trouble with the Google ranking due to competition in the namespace for that acronym. However, that didn't stop plans for the purchase of a Swede-made MSM Type A midget submarine, which was to be used to disrupt the development of an oil and gas project in the now hotly disputed South-china Sea.

The MILFs are one of several separatist groups in the Philippines, which come in Islamic and Communist, and just-plain-thug varieties. The formation of the of the MILF is actually, unsurprisingly, a tragic story. In the 60s with the incumbent government of the Philippines, proceed with plans to invade and reunite neighboring Sabah, which was granted under a lease, but somehow after World War 2 ended up as Malaysian territory.

Troops from the western region of Mindanao were selected and trained to form an elite squadron. When the troops learned that their mission would involve lethal combat with their neighboring kin-folks they refused to participate, so they were massacred by the Philippines Armed Forces on March 18, 1968. This led to years of uprising and political unrest, and it was only recently that the Philippines Government formally acknowledged that the incident occurred.

Reading about this and other affairs helped me to learn about governments, terrorism, political intrigue and rebel groups. We live in a violent world where democracy and other formal government processes seem to be a thin, fragile structure over game-of-thrones style chaos.

Then no one would answer your support calls anymore. L0L.

Before anyone overreacts, keep in mind that this is being challenged. Multiple petitioners have filed against it: http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/276301/scitech/technology/petitioners-seek-tro-vs-cybercrime-prevention-act http://www.manilatimes.net/index.php/news/top-stories/32459-more-petitions-vs-cybercrime-law-filed).

Also, the country's journalism community was part of that filing: http://www.sunstar.com.ph/breaking-news/2012/10/03/journalists-rights-center-file-opposition-cybercrime-law-246154

Some legislators have voiced concerns about it: http://www.sunstar.com.ph/davao/local-news/2012/10/03/davao-lawyers-want-cybercrime-law-reviewed-246097 http://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/local-news/2012/10/02/cebuano-legislators-back-calls-amend-cybercrime-law-245887

And if they're on the ball, the nation's version of the ACLU - the Civil Liberties Union of the Philippines - will be weighing in soon. The point is that this is not a done deal yet. There's no question that it's an ugly blow, but very few citizens trust the Filipino government with sweeping powers. The only question is what the protesters/challengers endurance is in fighting it.

It's not news that an old system was replaced by a new system. It is interesting that an old supercomputer wasn't replaced by a new supercomputer; a cluster of cheap commodity systems does the job just as well when you don't need real-time performance. This sort of creative use of PCs is what drove SGI into bankruptcy and irrelevance.

This Philipine newspaper story fills in some important details missing from the Australian PC News article: the age of the SGI system (10 years) and the reason it was costing so much to run (expensive to get application support for IRIX, an OS that hasn't had a major update in the same 10-year period).

This last issue is what really killed the SGI system: not its age (these big installations are often around for decades), but the fact that only a few people are working on SGI platforms any more, and those that do can command premium prices. If the system had been from Sun, HP, or IBM, or any company with an OS still under active development, it might have been cost effective to keep it in place. This is particularly relevant on Slashdot, where we're always hearing from folks who just don't understand why there isn't better application support for their favorite platform.

I'm still curious as to what specific SGI system got junked. Best guess: a low-end Origin.

Edgar Escultura is a well known crackpot on sci.math. He claimed to have proved Fermat's Last Theorem years ago. (He also believes 0.999... recurring is less than 1.) He contacted Andrew Wiles about it. Wiles's response is in this article. As a result of this reply the article I linked to was published in the Manila Times. Can there be any doubt that, at least in Manila, there's a serious lack of appreciation of sarcasm?

Or maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps the editor of the Manila Times is in fact an incredibly sarcastic bastard!

That's a nice posting and all, except for the fact that a 13 year study by University of Pittsburg found there was no statistical increase in occurrences of cancer around the Three Mile Island plant in Harrisburg PA.

Secondly, the reason you cite for not touching the Challenger fragments was because of (1) the temperature of the metal on re-entry and (2) the hazardous fumes from the aforementioned burning material. Although a local Texas sheriff claimed there was "radioactive material on board" (picked up by reporters with little fact checking), NASA has since said that the only radioactive material on the shuttle at the time were in the smoke detectors.

How do you check for deaths by radiation? By measuring the increase in cancers with respect to a "control group" of those that were not exposed to the radioactive source. For example, population of Seattle vs Chernobyl. If cancer rate is statistically higher, then you're golden.

Oh, and we have a great way to store radioative waste, it's called Yucca Mountain. Find a mountain of volcanic minerals, surrounded by more mountains and deserts, with an non-existent water table in a non-populated area, on government land with a 110 mile radius. Seal the crap underground, and post a guard for the next 6,000 years.

Hell, in another 100 years, we may find methods to "refine" the nuclear waste for more fissionable material, much like we do now in extracting uranium from ore. Just as we aren't going to run out of oil, we're going to run out of cheap oil, then we retool for more extraction. Our children's childeren will be thanking us for taking the time to concentrate all the material into one site for easy processing, just as we build trash-to-steam generating plants (sorry, "reclamation centers") at trash dumps today.

Unless you live in india. Then, may I suggest monsterphilipines.com?

Unless you live in the Philippines and are a doctor, and then you're back to monster.com for US nursing positions.

You might want to try again. Blame a screwed currency exchange rate for example.

I'd rather not. It is generaly agreed that the U.S. dollar is overvalued (of note, the pdf ends by saying that "overvalued" doesn't mean much when private market forces hold sway and the government doesn't intervene...but check out what G.W. Bush has been doing as of late.)

As for the bloated lifestyle, I would like to ask you the following: how much do you spend a year on cable, satelite, cellphone, laundry services, fuel, restaurants, computer games, music, clothes, electronics. That list isn't all encompassing, its just to give you an idea.

Next, tell me how much on average how much do you spend on a new shirt? On a pair of shoes? On a tie? On sunglasses? How much did you spend on your SUV (yes, I'm assuming here, but don't forget in my original post I said Americans (in general)).

Do you see where I'm getting at? Now contrast this to a country like Russian, which person for person could more or less get any given US job done just as well. How much do they own? How much do they spend for one shirt (hint, as a rule of thumb, they ain't buying polo and hilfigger)? Ok, then turn it up a notch and think India, think China!

That is what I was talking about when I refered to bloat.

Fact is, this shit has already happened (think Canada!) and its only a matter of time till it happens on a grander scale (and if you're saying "it happened to Canada and we're fine, so what?" don't forget that Canada only has 30,000,000 people, and its own economic sectors to keep them busy, all the other countries I've listed have significantly more people, and not necessarily other economic sectors to fall back on, which makes them more eager to take yours).

I'm starting to ramble a bit but what I'm still saying is unless Americans cut back you won't be able to stop this from happening. If you still don't understand what I mean by now, then unfortunately you are one of the masses who doesn't realise not just how good they've got it, but how excessive they've got it as well.

A downturn in the economy (think black monday 1929 + drought) would seriously change your response to the questions I asked above. What if that downturn was spawned by an exoduse of jobs from the US, and the crash of an overinflated U.S. dollar? And since the US has a massive trade deficite, if its dollar lost a significant amount of its value, wouldn't that affect its purchasing power? Do you think you'd still own/enjoy the things you do right now?

Oh, and one final note. Although I don't expect the above to happen tomorrow, has it occured to you that the reason you don't hear about this sort of stuff in the media, is because they have a vested interest in not alarming/letting you know? That's right, just keep giving them your money so that when the time does come, they have a pillow to fall on. What will you fall on?

Although my arguments may not be entirely right or convincing, I hope they gave you though, and I hope you at least now see where I'm coming from.